Untergangers Chat
The Untergangers Chat was an independently run chat room created by Trapped Antics for Untergangers on 12 April 2012. During its lifetime, it was the most popular chat room for community interaction. In late December 2014, the moderators of the chat made the decision to permanently close it as they did not deem further maintenance of the chat to be viable. An announcement regarding the closure was posted to Pastebin. Background The very first suggestion for a chat room was made on 10 January 2012 in the Downfall Parodies Forum's suggestions boardChat Room Function? by AtomicAntics. Very soon after, HRP set up an IRC-based chat room in the DPF. It doesn't require users to have a forum account to use, but HRP's decision to implement an IRC-based chat instead of IM-like implementations, added with IRC's inherent complexity to most Internet users today, proves to be deterring to most. In order to provide a more user-friendly chat room, and coinciding with the launch of a chat platform on Wikia, the Hitler Parody Wiki enabled Wikia's chat extension some time after after the DPF and was available on the HPW website (i.e. this wiki). Wikia's IM-like chat is more user-friendly, and it attracted some attention. Master Studios would come to the wiki's chat at a certain time of the day regularly, but in the end neither this chat, nor DPF's, seems to be gathering much traffic. Finally, on 12 April 2012, Johnnomonster set up the current chat room on Chatango's platform. This time it received a very positive feedback from Untergangers. The DPF quickly switched its IRC chat room to the Chatango one, thanks to Chatango's extensive support for embedding their chat on other websites. The wiki's native chat remained in place for some time, until mfaizsyahmi discovered a way to embed the Chatango chat room on the wiki as well, through a chance encounter with a similar implementation in Dead Island Wiki. Around May 2013, the chat is also available on all DPF pages. With the same chat embedded in many websites around the Unterganging sphere, a unified chat room for most Untergangers is achieved. Support of the chat in the wiki has been found to violate Wikia's Terms of Use by Wikia's staff and had to be taken down on 14 June 2013. After a minor script rewrite to get around the violation, it was reinstated on 7 August 2013, retaining the original look and feel. Impact For the first time ever, many Untergangers were able to chat in real time with each other. The establishment of the chat had helped fuel collaborations, spread news and ideas, and promote many new Untergangers. A few in-jokes have developed over time, such as members greeting with the first line of the Numa-Numa song (e.g. "Alo", "Salut" and sometimes humorously continued with "sunt eu un haiduc"), the coining and promulgation of terms such as "Göringitis", TheSilverUniverse being nicknamed the 'Sleeping Dragon', TheLawlDawg as 'TheLawnDawg', and so forth. The chat played a crucial role in the community parodies where Untergangers started making parodies about each other based largely on interactions within the chat. However, the chat was often mistreated as an 'official' chat despite the chat being independently run and rules agreed on by the group of moderators, of which were well received by the majority of its users. Details Features The following are features specific to Chatango chatrooms in general, and are not exclusive to the Unterganger's Chat: *Emoticons. There are two sets: **Emoticons that are free to use by anyone. **Premium emoticons available only when someone pays Chatango for it. The perk expires after a while. *Links to images and YouTube videos will be converted to embedded thumbnails. Hansi Krebs takes advantage of this by producing a batch of Parody Universe-specific image macros available here. *PM and profile image for registered Chatango users. *Customizable text font (from a list), size and colour. **Ability to use a custom font, but this most likely only affects your own system because custom fonts are client-side only (i.e. they're not sent along with the post). *Customizable display name colour *HTML5-based chatroom for mobile users, or anyone who wishes to use it. *For HTML5-based chat, the ability to upload and post photos right inside the chat.HTML5-based chat only *Filters. Phrases on the filter list are replaced with an asterisk (*). *Paid perks, including more emoticons (see above) and post background colour and imageFlash-based chat only.Payments go to Chatango the provider of the chat, and not the chat owner. *Record audio as part of your profile (not per-post). Notes: Moderators The list of moderators from the chat prior to its closure. Controversy 2012 In August 2012, there had been a notable increase in Untergangers going off topic and overusing Internet acronyms when there is nothing remotely humorous to "LOL" about. In addition to that, there had been a notable amount of people participating in talking about games all day and posting videos that have no relevance to the topic of the chat, despite warnings from moderators. To remedy the situation, stricter rules were added and moderation had become stricter - each user was warned once when breaching the rules and banned in the even of future breach. In late 2012, Slainender became the center of controversy. He spoke in the chat with mangled English, which caused frustration with most users in the chat and was severely uneducated about any topic being discussed. Further frustration surfaced when he tried to divert the topic of the chat to discussing his own channel and creations. His banning and had sparked a lot of argument, with the majority of untergangers agreeing with the banning. Ignorance and lack of common sense is looked down upon by most users of the chat, especially when a new user would impersonate a character (especially from Downfall) and attempted to role play, which was not permitted. It is also looked down upon when he shows signs of laziness, asked others to create parodies for them, asked questions which can be easily answered by using a search engine as well as relying entirely on others for ideas and not contributing himself. 2013 In June 2013, a mild controversy arose after someone struck Benad361 from the list of moderators, after he had been a successful moderator for almost a year, citing the fact that he was not promptly provided a reason. It was later confirmed he was removed along with another moderator for long periods of inactivity and was replaced by two newer ones once it was discovered there was miscommunication, months later. Presumably, his activism was the cause for his inactivity. From August 2013 to the end of 2013, there has also been a persistent controversy regarding GabrielleFluer1947, who's attitude in the chat has sparked dissatisfaction of several regular chat members as it is their belief that she takes things too seriously as well as regularly diverting the topic and posting multiple emotes when something of her distaste is mentioned. When a member make a joke about another member, even though in a friendly way, she would step in to defend the one whom the joke is targeted at although it is not necessary and the recipient of the joke understands it is in a friendly way. Some members also dislike the way she uses French grammar when it comes to punctuation although it's regarding grammar in general. It is also thought that she has started making use of sarcasm in a bad manner whenever someone spoke to her in a way that may be interpreted as critical (although it's usually constructive) but it is currently unclear. She has later setup her own chat in late December 2013, which blatantly plagiarised rules from the Untergangers Chat, causing further controversy and disapproval of herself as well as driving a large amount of users who previously were neutral on the matter to losing respect for her. There has been no more provocative actions from her since the last days of 2013. Simultaneously, AdolfRantsParodies was often visiting the chat to spread the news regarding taboo topics, namely his sexual encounters although it is uncertain whether there was any actual merit to his claims. He was known to ask users of the chat when they first discovered the action of pleasing one's self, sexual intercourse as well as pornography; this was initially seen as humorous by the majority of users but views had changed in the opposite direction after he would repeatedly discuss the topic in every visit, degrading the humour pertaining to the topic. The most notable incident was when a female user of the chat was asked if they had sexual intercourse in the past, driving both controversy and humour. He quickly lost favour in the community. The majority of the chat with the suspected exception of one undisclosed user had grown to despise him based on his actions. After 4 bans in a short time span, he was given a final warning though he had disputed the reasons for his bans; when asked to provide evidence of his actions, he dismissed a screenshot of his actions as fabricated even in the presence of users who had witnessed the incidents. In November 2013, he was permanently banned from the chat after bringing up taboo topics despite warnings. As of recent, he appears to have stopped persistent requests of his unban. 2014 In March 2014, John, former administrator, asked for users to show restraint after racial stereotypes were frequently posted in the chat. It had come to attention that stereotypes had been taken beyond proportion, which lead to speculation regarding certain users based on ethnicity. This had lead to a user of the chat abstaining from participating in the chat. As time passed, the situation regressed and there was no noticeable reform despite actions from moderators. At the end of the month, an announcement was issued regarding the problem and it was made overwhelmingly clear that this behaviour was not permitted and the issue was soon resolved. List of former frequent patrons Here's a list of former frequent patrons during the lifetime of the chat, sorted alphabetically. Note that this list does not depict patrons from any particular time. *AdolfTallentDay01 * AlphaSkyRaider * Benad361 *Das Reich *Fikamar27 *Hitler Rants Parodies *Hansi Krebs *KnightTemplar1453 *Mattwo *Subtitlecomedy *TheSilverUniverse * DictatorAntics * NeinTails95NL * Gokyr586 * Jawado * JennieParker87 * Johnnomonster * MabusParodies * Mfaizsyahmi * MFDK * MidnightMusic * MisterTalkingMachine * nhlfan40 * Soalric * TFPStudios * TheLawlDawg References Category:Websites Category:Unterganger Interactions Category:Chat Rooms